I'm excited about this team...I just hope that our rebounding improves and that these new guys can shoot FTs. Rebounding and FTs are big keys to winning on the road. Looking forward to this upcoming season...

My question marks for this team? Who is our third scorer? Where do we get our inside scoring?

I love the length of the 2s and 3s but we do not have any legitimate 4s. They are combo 3\4s and I just do not know if they will be tough enough in some games to guard and rebound againstbteams with those 6'8 250 lb true PFs.

Aren't Beard and Thompson the only 4-year members of this team? I think a lot of our success will depend on whether or not they play like 4-year seniors. They need to step up to the plate.

I look for Beard (I know I keep beating his drum) to step up as an experienced senior. However, I'm not sure I expect much more than what we've seen from Trey due to his temperament. I think he's content as a role player but not in the leading why like we saw with Manny Watkins, who was a player who was very self-aware but was never satisfied as a competitor. Trey seems satisfied. I don't see much push to be greater from him. Skilled but too passive, IMO.

You do raise a good point about 4-year senior vs a JUCO senior. Althought, Thomas will have been in the program for 3 years and a high-major basketball for 5 years, so I think we can throw him in with Beard and Thompson, and I think he can make a reasonable jump as a 5th-year senior. He gets a lot of flack from Hog fans, but he did have his best statistical season in many areas this past season. One of those career-high stats, unfortunately, was 2.9 fouls/game. If he can start fouling less, we could be talking about a player that has the skillset to give us 8-10 PPG and 5-6 RPG. Not sexy but solid production at the 4 spot.

Much will, obviously, depend on what Macon learned as a junior, but he and Macon offer the Hogs two possible All-SEC performers. So if Beard and Thomas can step up as can reasonably be expected and Trey continues to provide the presence he has the last couple season (hopefully a little more), and the 3 talented freshmen can contribute similar to talented freshmen we've had in the past, we could see an NCAA tournament-caliber team. I'm not even mentioning Adrio Bailey and C.J. Jones here. If what we saw from Bailey was a harbinger of things to come, yikes. That guy could be a real X-factor. 4 points and 3 steals over 19 minutes vs UNC don't come close to painting the picture of how big he was in that game. He could be our much/long-needed junkyard dog in the frontcourt, similar to what we got from Manny Watkins in the backcourt. If C.J. can start better applying defensive concepts, he could bust the offensive wide open with his scoring ability that, at times, looked effortless (though other times looked forced -- likely due to his playing time situation).